


Race Among the Ruins

by LightMayo



Category: The Office (US)
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon Divergent, F/M, Season 9
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-30
Updated: 2021-01-17
Packaged: 2021-03-10 19:33:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 9,662
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28422486
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LightMayo/pseuds/LightMayo
Summary: Jim’s new job has already placed his marriage on thin ice. How will it hold when an old “friend” shows up to say hello?Title comes from an extremely underappreciated song by Gordon Lightfoot.
Relationships: Jim Halpert/Cathy Simms, Pam Beesly/Jim Halpert
Comments: 4
Kudos: 14





	1. Chapter 1

Pam woke up to the sound of her alarm clock. _7:15_ , she thought to herself. _No better time to start the day._ Still, she didn’t get up out of bed, but stayed lying on her side facing out at the right edge of her bed. She looked over her shoulder and saw Jim’s backside, his position on the bed mirroring hers. _Shoot, they really were sleeping as far apart as they could._

Still, Pam figured she should be glad he was even there. He was trying to spend more nights at home so he could help more with the kids before driving to Philly the next morning. His coworkers didn’t seem to mind him coming in a little late if he made up the time on the back end of the days. And it wasn’t like in Philly he had much of anything to do.

Today, though, he had to be in for a big meeting at 10:30 on the dot. Pam considered reaching over and tapping his shoulder before she saw that he had already sat up and was looking over at the alarm clock on her nightstand. “7:45?” Jim exclaimed. He turned to Pam. “You don’t know how to set an alarm clock?” he asked, bitterly sarcastic. From the way he was looking her, she half expected him to follow it up with an “idiot” or a “dumbass.”

Jim didn’t give her time to answer before jumping out of bed in a hurry to get ready. Pam, meanwhile, had more time, as 7:45 was when she woke when Jim didn’t have to go to Philly. She woke the kids and moved them downstairs. Phillip was crying, perhaps from all the commotion of his father’s hurry to get ready, and Pam picked him up with one arm while Cece tugged at her.

“Alright, I’m out of here,” Jim said as he ran back into the living room to grab something.

“You’re not going to help with the kids?” Pam asked, very overwhelmed by everything that was going on. That was, after all, the whole reason he hadn’t just spent the night in Philly. Jim didn’t appear to hear her as he ran out the front door with just a wave, got in his car, and drove off.

Jim waited to call Pam until he was nearing the city. He figured he would be nice to her and give her some time to settle into her day. He had about half an hour left when he did call. “It looks like I am just barely going to make it on time,” he said, “no thanks to you.”

She didn’t respond at first. It made Jim wonder if something was going on at the office, especially when she did respond and seemed almost shocked. “That’s good to hear,” she eventually said.

Jim waited. “Don’t you have something to say?” he asked. She expressed confusion. “About the fact that you set the alarm wrong and almost made me miss this meeting,” he explained.

”Are you expecting me to apologize to you?” Pam asked. She seemed to be in disbelief, which Jim didn’t understand.

”Yes,” he said, getting frustrated. “I told you to set it for 7:15, you know that’s true, and yet you failed to do that for God knows what reason.”

Pam barked out a short, bitter laugh. “I’m not doing that,” she said, clearly angry, “that’s not happening.

Jim gripped the steering wheel. _She could be so irrational._ “Pam, I don’t think it’s so unreasonable for me to ask you to help me out once in a while.”

”Help you out!” Now she was raising her voice. Jim didn’t want to deal with this right now. “Help you out liked you helped me out this morning with our two children?”

”Pam, for starters, we wouldn’t have been in that situation if if weren’t for you screwing up the simple task I asked of you, and secondly, this is taking for granted that I was so generous as to work out a way to even be there in the morning.”

”Oh, wow, Jim,” she started sarcastically. “So generous of you to _help take care of your own children from time to time_. You’re a goddamn saint, Jim.”

Now it was Jim’s turn to let out an angry laugh. “Pam,” he said, “you know I’m doing this for the family.”

”I know you think you are.”

”Pam.” He sighed, exasperated. “I’m not having this conversation right now.”

“No, Jim, you aren’t having any conversation at any time. You just do whatever you damn well please.” She was flat out yelling, and in that moment, it sounded like she might have been crying, until she hung up the phone.

Jim sighed before chuckling humorlessly to himself. He didn’t have time to try calling her back.

The meeting actually went really well (for a moment Jim considered calling Pam to tell her before remembering the morning’s events), and it was definitely a big step forward for the company. Colin, Jim’s friend from college, was especially pleased with the outcome, and he offered to take everybody out to a late lunch.

It was on the walk back to the office that Jim saw someone he thought he would never see again. “Son of a bitch,” he said under his breath. This was not was his day needed.

”Hey, Jim. Long time, no see,” said Cathy Simms enthusiastically, pulling a strand of hair behind her ear.


	2. Chapter 2

Jim had worked hard to keep his marital troubles out of mind during his meeting that morning, and it had paid off: the meeting had gone great. Still, as he sat at the restaurant with the coworkers, he couldn’t keep the subject from popping into his head. He knew on some level he should call his wife, but he _really_ didn’t want to. Needless to say, this was not the surprise that Jim needed.

”Um, hi, Cathy,” Jim said sheepishly, and he gave her a tight smile, hoping for her to keep walking.

“Hi! How are things going?” Cathy continued.

”Oh, uh, yeah, it’s alright.” Cathy looked towards Jim’s coworkers, who had stopped walking to observe the interaction. “Everyone, this is Cathy Simms, she was the temp who stood in when Pam was on maternity leave. Cathy, these are the people I work with down here in Philly.”

“Temp who stood in for Pam?” Cathy repeated. “Come on, Jim, that sounds so impersonal. We’re old friends.”

“It’s... accurate,” he explained, and Cathy _giggled_ , she actually _giggled_ , at _that._

“So, Jim,” she asked, “you and Pam, you guys live in Philly now?”

“No, actually. Still in Scranton. I have a part time job here, with these guys,” and he gestured towards his coworkers a few feet away without looking towards them.

”So you commute every day all the way from Scranton?”

 _God_ , Jim thought, _how did she even get here?_ He looked towards his coworkers now, and realized he probably had to answer her question. “No, I have an apartment down here in Philly where I stay sometimes.”

“Oh, cool,” Cathy said. “Where?” She was asking where he lived. Wasn’t this a question he could tell her he didn’t want to answer?

Apparently not, as Colin took the opportunity to pipe in himself. “Actually, Jim, I’ve been meaning to confirm your address.” And then he listed it off down to the apartment number.

Jim could have shot him. “Yes,” he said, “that’s right.” He barely even noticed that Cathy had written it down.

“Awesome! Well, maybe I’ll stop by sometime and see if you’re home.”

 _I’m sure you will_ , Jim thought, but he didn’t say much else as Cathy walked away and he walked back to the office with his coworkers.

Pam eyed the phone on her desk for what was not the first time that day. She couldn’t stop thinking about her phone call that morning with Jim. The shock she had felt when he demanded she apologize, the anger when he explained his twisted reasoning for why she should.

She remembered how she was crying as she hung up the phone, which was becoming an all too common ending to her phone calls with Jim. This wasn’t even one of the worst ones.

Still, Pam had to call him. He was her husband. She loved him, even in her anger she knew that. That was the key, right? That was what was important? She had to call him that day, and she might as well get it done then.

She picked up the phone and held it in her hand. What would she even say? Jim didn’t even let her get in a single word before his bitter comment stabbed her in the chest. She remembered his words, “No thanks to you.” She remembered all of the anger they carried.

Pam put down the phone. She would call him that night, after the kids were in bed.

Jim wasn’t even surprised when he heard the doorbell ring. He was watching basketball on his couch, Daryl was away for the night, and Jim sat still hoping that he could ignore her.

”Jim, it’s Cathy! Open up,” she said, sounding excited.

After sitting in silence for a moment more, Jim realized he couldn’t ignore the situation anymore. He walked to the door and cracked it open to look at her. “Hi! I figured we could watch the basketball game together, although it looks like you already have it on. I brought some popcorn.”

”Cathy, no, I don’t think—“

“Do you have something else going on? Because we can do this another time, I just figured....” She threw her weight against the door, and Jim mostly held it still but it cracked open a few inches more. She smiled.

“No, but, Cathy, I’m not sure—“

”Oh, come on, Jim. It’ll be fun. We can reminisce about the good ol’ days. What’s the harm if you don’t have anything going on?”

Jim shook his head and tried not to audibly groan. If only Dwight were there with his pesticides. Jim tried to be firm. “Cathy, no. No,” he asserted.

She wouldn’t accept that. “Come on, Jim, I just want to come in and watch the basketball game. That’s all that’s going on.” When she pushed the door open again, Jim didn’t put up a fight.

Having Cathy there was about what Jim expected, though it wasn’t the worst thing in the world. She explained how after all the shenanigans in Florida, she had left Dunder Mifflin and taken a junior office administrator position in Philadelphia with SEPTA.

Jim, meanwhile, caught her up on the happenings of the office. She did a pretty good impression of Dwight, of whom she had some twisted, nonfactual memory of “playing that great bed bugs prank on together,” and Robert California, who she was disappointed to hear quit (Jim didn’t tell her about the gymnasts for fear of what she’d do with that), especially considering she hadn’t seen either in almost a year. For a second, it made Jim wonder with concern exactly how big of a role he had played in her life.

The constant flirting ranged from pathetic to slightly offensive. It started when she got hot and decided to take off her zipperless sweatshirt, lifting in over her head very slowly but also in a way that lifted her shirt and gave Jim a long opportunity to look at her bra. Then she was playing with the popcorn: dropping it down her shirt, dropping it right in front of Jim, requiring her to bend over, and trying to convince Jim to let her toss it in his mouth, which he refused. At one point, the basketball game inspired her to repeat a popular stereotype about African-Americans, which she suggested would also be true of Jim despite his being white.

Perhaps the most annoying was her creeping slowly but surely over to Jim’s side of the couch eager to make contact with him. Each time she got too close, bordering on leaning against him, he would excuse himself to the bathroom and come back to the opposite side of the couch.

So Cathy might have thought he had the smallest bladder ever, but the real trouble came when she wound up on the same side of the couch as the phone and it rang. As soon as the noise registered, Jim practically jumped over Cathy to try to grab it, but she was quicker. Cathy introduced herself, and Jim could tell from what he heard that it was Pam.

Cathy held it up to him. “It’s for you,” she said. ( _No, really!_ ) Jim’s mind was racing. _Never should have let Cathy in_ , he thought. _Idiot!_ He wanted to tell her to hang up and he would call back tomorrow, but he new that would only make things worse. It was the last thing he wanted to do, but he had to pick up the phone and talk to Pam.

Pam made her feelings known as soon as she knew he was on the line. “You’re a real piece of shit, Jim, you know that?” she screamed through the telephone, so loud it made Jim half jump in place.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Understanding this chapter relies in part on this deleted scene: https://www.google.com/amp/s/morethanthatfic.tumblr.com/post/165410523808/after-hours-ep816-deleted-scene-pam-finds-out/amp.

Pam wasn’t thinking when she screamed at Jim. It was instinctive. A knee-jerk reaction. A reaction to the situation: the kind of situation everyone always fears but never imagines would happen to them.

If Pam was thinking, for example, she would have paused to consider her two sleeping children. Luckily, she didn’t hear any crying. Still, she grabbed the phone and hurried out to her backyard. She didn’t trust herself not to start screaming at Jim again.

Still, Pam hadn’t been thinking at first, and now that she was, she had no idea what to say. She never thought she would actually be in this situation. He was supposed to say something, anyway, wasn’t he? Pam didn’t know how this worked. She never wanted to know how this worked. Wouldn’t he start denying it? ( _Oh, God, he would start denying it, wouldn’t he? Were things so broken that he wouldn’t even bother to deny it?_ )

Finally, after what felt like hours, he started talking. The sound of his voice made Pam want to scream at him, smash her phone in two, and break down crying. “Pam, this isn’t what it looks like.” _This isn’t what it looks like._ What a goddam cliche. She was never supposed to hear that phrase.

How was she even supposed to respond to that? She settled on a quiet, pathetic “eh.”

“Pam, honey, it’s really not, I swear.” He was growing more frantic. It was better, at least, than the silence. “Pam, she showed up on the street when I was with some coworkers. One of those dumbasses gave her my address and when she showed up I was too tired to fight her. That’s it, that’s all, I swear, Pam, Jesus.”

She wanted to cry, but she knew she couldn’t. Which meant she couldn’t express any emotion at all. “Do you expect me to believe that? Cathy ended up in your apartment just by coincidence?”

”Yes, Pam, you have to believe it.” He was pleading with her now. “You have to believe it because you know it happened before. You know it, Pam. _You know it_. You picked up the phone and heard the story. Same situation!”

“This is not the same situation, Jim.” A statement she knew instantly to be true but didn’t want to think through the ramifications of.

“It is the same, Pam, I swear. Nothing is happening. And nothing happened that night in Tallahassee, which even when you heard her voice you knew, and you have to know that now. You can call Dwight to confirm.”

”That’s a red herring, Jim.”

He stayed silent for a moment. “You have to believe me, love,” he said more quietly this time. “Nothing is happening. You have no evidence that anything is happening. You have to trust me. Just two old friends watching a basketball game,” but she knew even he didn’t believe that.

”Is Darryl there?”

“No.”

Then she thought of a question she knew she had to ask, but after everything that had happened, even asking it would sound like a sad joke. “Is Einstein there?”

“No, Einstein isn’t here,” he replied, and it sounded weak and pathetic. There was another stretch of silence. “Listen, Pam,” he said, regaining some twisted cousin of confidence, “I don’t think you have the right to tell me what to do.”

“Right!?” Pam exclaimed. “I couldn’t tell you what to do if I wanted to. You’ve spent the last few months just doing whatever you damn well please. I can do nothing to change that.”

Jim chuckled sarcastically and resisted the urge to quote Ronald Reagan. “You certainly tried this morning with your whole alarm setting failure.”

Now it was Pam’s turn to laugh, short and bitter. _He is actually bringing that up._ She couldn’t believe it. She didn’t know what to say. She had nothing left to say. She was done with the conversation.

“Jim, why _don’t_ you go have sex with Cathy? I think you would really enjoy that.”

Pam hung up the phone. Then she walked back inside, sat down on her couch, and cried silently into the empty night, where nobody would have heard her anyway.

Jim walked out of the bedroom into the living room. Cathy was sitting back on the couch still watching the game. Jim knew he needed to make her leave, but he was _so tired_. He would do it later. When the game was over.

In the meantime, he walked by his fridge and grabbed himself a can of beer. “You want a beer?” he asked Cathy. _Just two old friends watching a basketball game_.

She held her hands up over her head, and aiming to avoid any chance of hitting the TV, he obliged her request. Surprisingly, she caught it perfectly, though she waited to open the can until Jim sat down next to her. When they both opened theirs at the same time, she tapped her can against Jim’s and said “Cheers.” It was stupid, but it made Jim laugh a little. 

“So, what’d Pam want?” Cathy asked, scooching closer to Jim on the couch.

Jim sighed. _What did she want?_ She must have had a reason to call him, but he never learned it before they got distracted by other topics. “Oh,” he said, “I don’t even know exactly.”

Cathy turned her head towards Jim and frowned at him. “What does that mean?” When Jim didn’t answer, she kept digging. “Is something going on between you two.”

Jim opened his mouth to start talking. Alarms started going off in his head, _I shouldn’t be doing this_ , but he ignored them. He was _so tired_ of everything. “Pam and I,” he started, “have been going through a bit of a rough patch.”

“Oh,” Cathy said, “I’m sorry to hear that. Do you mind me asking what’s going on?”

“It’s this job, really. I took it, and honestly, Cathy, I really like it. It’s the first time in my whole life I actually really care about what I’m doing. It’s just far away and I’m around the house less often than I would like to be.”

“And so Pam is jealous?”

“Jealous of this job for taking up my time? I guess that’s one way to put it.”

“No, I mean she’s jealous of you?”

”Oh,” Jim said. “Well, honestly, I’m not sure she is. She seems pretty happy with everything about our old life and Scranton.”

“She’s happy with Scranton? Now look, Jim, working with the transportation system, I hear every day about how this city is full of rats and actual pieces of shit. And that’s just when we have to bring in the city government.” That made Jim laugh. “But Philadelphia is so... alive in a way that Scranton just... isn’t.”

“Yeah, I don’t know. It’s funny because I know she could do so much more if she wanted to.”

“So, that’s where the problems start.”

“Well, we’ve had some problems with communication.”

“Yeah, I can testify that the cell service in Scranton is nothing to write home about.”

That made Jim chuckle again. It made him think that he was getting dangerously close to actually enjoying hanging out with Cathy. When she moved closer against him on the couch, he stayed right where he was. “Nooo,” he said, still smiling in spite of the subject matter. “There were some things I should have talked to Pam about that I didn’t. But really, it’s led to her trying to control every aspect of my life here.”

“No, Jim,” Cathy said, mocking Pam, “you can’t go out with your friends. Even though you’re in a different city where you have no impact on me... can’t let you do it.”

Jim shook his head. Partially in amusement and partially because that’s really how Pam was. “Honestly, though,” he said, “I think she might not trust me.”

”I trust you,” Cathy said.

Jim smiled. “Well, I do appreciate that, but for better or worse, you are not actually my wife.”

“Really!” Cathy said sarcastically. “See all this time I thought we were married, and now you just drop this on me?”

Jim chuckled while watching the conclusion of the basketball game. The 76ers blew it at the last second, and as the other team came to win, Jim and Cathy let out a “Dammit” in unison.

With the game over, Jim really felt it was time for Cathy to leave, but somehow he found himself getting up to get two more beers, one for each of them. The TV station was playing old _Cheers_ reruns, and Jim let Cathy stay and watch a few of them. It was Jim’s favorite sitcom, and he didn’t get to see it very often, so he figured, _What’s the harm?_

When Jim got back from the kitchen and came to sit down on the couch, rather than sitting opposite Cathy, he sat right next to her and put one arm around her. He let her lean against his chest, and he used his arm to hold her close. She grabbed a blanket and put it over the both of them.

They both lost track of the episode count until it became very clear that they were going to fall asleep like that, cuddling close with each other. In his groggy state moments before sleep, Jim had the thought that he should lean down and kiss Cathy on the lips, but his eyes fluttered shut and he drifted off to sleep before he could do anything of the sort.


	4. Chapter 4

When Jim came to consciousness he was happy to feel Pam leaning against him. It was a surprise certainly. They had been fighting a lot lately, and it had clearly had an impact on how they slept. In fact, he had he had thought they had been fighting. He wasn’t complaining, though. He missed waking up next to Pam. Her head on his shoulder, her hair across his chest, the skin of her arm against his, her weight keeping him warm during the night. What had they been fighting about anyway? What was it. Oh, yeah, it was Cathy—

 _Shit_.

That wasn’t Pam’s head or hair or skin. That wasn’t Pam making him feel warm or comfortable. It was Cathy.

How on Earth did Jim let that happen? _Idiot_ , he told himself. Had had screwed up big league. They hadn’t kissed, let alone had sex, thanks be to God, but Jim still knew that it was wrong. No married man was supposed to wake up like this with a woman who wasn’t his wife.

A part of Jim’s brain told him he had to jump up. End this situation immediately. Still, he looked down at Cathy’s head leaning against his shoulder. It seemed as though it was not that she had been leaning against him but each against the other. Jim looked at her face. She was still asleep and seemed peaceful. He felt her hair tickle his chest as a couple of strands fell down the inside of his shirt.

Jim hadn’t woken up like this with Pam in a long time. He knew it would be even longer now that he had done this. If they it ever happened again. ( _Would this be the nail in the coffin?_ He didn’t want to go down that road.)

So much of Jim’s brain was screaming at him. He had done a terrible thing. Still, he didn’t get up. He was in deep trouble already, and this wasn’t going to dig any deeper. He might as well wait a moment. So he leaned to the side, just a little, putting some weight against Cathy. He felt her warm skin against his arm, and her body heat kept him so comfortable. This felt so good. He wanted _so badly_ to be doing this with Pam. He _missed_ her.

It was in that state of simultaneous comfort and longing that Jim drifted back off into a very shallow sleep. When he woke up again, just a few minutes later, the battle for control of his brain had been decisively won by the “You Dumbass” faction.

This time he did jump onto his feet, leaving Cathy to fall over of the couch. He turned to her as she opened her eyes. “You have to get out of here, Cathy,” he said, trying to be as firm and unambiguous as he should have been last night.

“Jim, what’s going on?” she said, playing dumb, although she might have been legitimately groggy.

“Don’t play dumb with me,” Jim said. “I’m not an idiot and neither are you. You need to collect your things and go. Don’t argue.”

She seemed to have finally decided to respect Jim’s wishes and began preparing to leave. Jim regarded her with anger. Still, he knew he couldn’t blame her for what had happened; he had made the decisions he had made. “Do you think Pam and you will work out?” Cathy said as she prepared to leave.

“I can only hope so,” Jim said.

Waking up next to Cathy had been some sort of a shock to Jim. Something, anyway, that made him seriously think about his marriage. Where had it taken a wrong turn? How had he gotten there? Because he knew he wouldn’t have done what he did one year ago. And he thought about the phone call, too, which went very differently from one almost a year ago.

So this subject kept Jim’s mind busy from the moment Cathy left to when he walked into Athlead and greeted Colin. “So, Jim,” he asked, “how’s the wife?”

“Well, I haven’t called her this morning, so we haven’t had a chance to fight.” Jim stopped when he saw from Colin’s face that his answer had been more serious than was attended. “No, I’m just kidding. She’s alright.” Kidding, even though his characterization was entirely accurate.

“So, have you guys set a date to move down here?”

 _Move down here_. Jim hadn’t even told Pam about the plans to move down to Philly. Jim made a vague no sound as Colin walked away, but the question kept bouncing around in his head.

How had they gotten so screwed up? Maybe it had something to do with the fact that he made plans to move the family to Philadelphia without telling her. If he did that, perhaps not telling her about another woman wasn’t as big a leap as he wanted to think it was. Especially if cuddling on the couch with another woman was also already in the cards.

Jim had been staring at the computer screen for too long and he really needed to do some work before returning to Scranton. Still, the gears of his brain were winding down a road to a tragic realization that he knew instantly to be true. Pam did not trust him. Perhaps, the worst part was that he could not blame her for one minute.

The phone call kept bouncing around in Pam’s head and would not stop. As she walked up to her bedroom, eyes still wet, as she got herself together and took care of the kids in the morning, and as she walked into the office and said good morning to Dwight.

She still couldn’t believe Cathy had been there in the first place. That was the big one. The initial shock of hearing Cathy’s voice over the phone was something Pam thought she might never get over.

She knew Jim hadn’t cheated on her. Probably. At the very least, she wasn’t dealing with the possibility at the moment. What really concerned her was how close to correct it was that a very similar call had happened about a year ago. Still, the call from a year ago went so differently. That made Pam think that Jim and she were really in trouble.

What was she going to say to Jim when she saw him that night? Would he be mad at her? How was it supposed to work in these situations? Pam new there was no chance of getting any work done that day, so she walked back to the break room where she ended up running into Dwight.

“Hey, Dwight,” she said, her voice weak.

“Hello, Pam,” he said. He might have sounded sympathetic, for Dwight, at least. “Is everything alright.”

She pulled a chair up to Dwight’s table and he patted her shoulder, meaning to comfort her. She sighed. “When Jim and Cathy were together in Tallahassee, what exactly happened?” She felt disappointed in herself for doing as Jim said, but she was tired of not knowing anything and figured this was better than staring at her empty computer.

“I thought you knew.” She shook her head. “Well, basically, she was coming onto him super strong. It was really pathetic. It’s like when one bear....” Pam groaned, but luckily Dwight abandoned the analogy. “Anyway, he mostly just ignored, did nothing even worth noticing. Why?”

“Well,” Pam wasn’t sure she wanted to explain this to Dwight. But, she also didn’t want to go until seeing Jim without talking to anyone. “I called Jim last night, and Cathy was there. I accused Jim of, well, you know.”

”Jim wouldn’t cheat on you,” Dwight assured her, but when she started crying anyway, he put his arms around her for just a moment.

“I once would have thought he wouldn’t take a new job and invest our life savings without telling me.” Dwight looked at Pam comfortingly, saying nothing. “I guess....” Pam trailed off as she overwhelmed herself with thoughts of what exactly had gone wrong in Jim and she’s relationship.

What she finally admitted she knew was a horrible thing to say. She couldn’t decide if it was more sad or scary or just both. She knew it, ultimately, to be totally true. “Dwight,” she said, looking her friend in the eyes. “I do not trust Jim.”


	5. Chapter 5

Jim was going to be late getting home. Not _too_ late. But late enough that the kids would already have eaten dinner, gotten ready for bed, and gone to sleep. The things he was supposed to be there to help with.

Pam would be angry. He considered all sorts of excuses: there was bad traffic, someone boxed in his car in the garage, but really it was his fault, losing track of time working on things that weren’t really urgent. He wasn’t going to bother. She probably wouldn’t even going to ask. Which was kind of sad, in a way. Weren’t they supposed to be still caring about things like this? Wasn’t it _worse_ they she wouldn’t yell at him?

 _She doesn’t trust me_ , Jim thought. Jim had been thinking that all day, and he knew it to be true. Of course, he had just been thinking of which lie he would use to explain his lateness. And he didn’t have any immediate plans to tell her about what went down with Cathy.

Jim hadn’t called her all day. He knew he needed to. It was just... hard. The last two times had not gone well. Perhaps if they could talk in person, it would go better. Then again, maybe he was just fooling himself. _She doesn’t trust you, that’s the real problem_.

Jim didn’t say anything when he walked into the house. Pam was in the kitchen, having just finished washing the dishes. Her sleeves were rolled up, and there was water across her shirt, and her hair was messily tied back, but strands of it were falling out of the tie on either side, framing her face, and she looked so cute. Jim wanted to walk up to her and kiss her. But he wouldn’t. He couldn’t.

They regarded each other silently. Jim still wanted to go touch her. He was reminded of just that morning, feeling Cathy’s weight and warmth against him, and he felt guiltier than he ever had, thinking about another woman while staring at his wife, but he wanted to touch Pam so badly, and Cathy was the closest he had gotten to that in too long.

Still, his desire to touch her was strong. “Hey,” he said with a nervous chuckle, trying to put a smile on his face, “it’s good to see you.” Then he stuck out his hand for her to shake.

She regarded his hand with an air of surprise and confusion. _Shaking hands? Is this really what we have descended to?_ she probably was thinking. To be clear, Jim was thinking the same thing. He knew, though, that if he didn’t shake her hand they would have likely gone the whole night without touching. It was really pathetic. Even when she was engaged to Roy, he would have had the balls to hug her. But now... this.

She did end up shaking his hand, as formally as one would with a business associate. Still, he relished the feeling of her skin against his. _This is pathetic_ , he thought as she moved her hand back down to her side. “We need to talk,” Pam told him.

 _We need to talk_. When you’re dating someone, those are the four words you least want to hear. Did they mean the same thing here? Was this the end? This didn’t feel like the end. One day, when someone asked how his marriage with the love of his life ended, would he say “I stood quietly and nodded?” But he was being overdramatic. After all, they _really_ did really need to talk. If she hadn’t, he probably would have said the exact same thing.

So, Jim followed her into the living room and sat down on the opposite side of he couch. “So,” Pam said, “we have some problems.”

Jim thought of various sarcastic jokes he could make, but he wasn’t going to say any of them. “Yeah,” he settled on saying, almost inaudibly. “I love you,” he said to break a long silence.

Pam looked back up at him and smiled almost imperceptibly. He had meant that to be comforting, as though they were sure to work things out, but instead it just sounded pathetic, having to even assert that in the first place.

Pam rested her hands on her lap and stared at them for a long time. “I don’t trust you,” she finally said. Jim saw tears beginning to form in her eyes.

“I know,” Jim said.

“You know?” Pam asked. Her voice came close to cracking but just barely didn’t.

”I figured it out this morning,” he answered.

“How can our relationship survive if I don’t trust you?”

“I don’t know,” he said, and now she was full on crying. Jim wanted so badly to move over and put his arm around her. He really wanted to. He couldn’t. He wanted so badly to reach over and touch her, but he just couldn’t make himself do it. There might have been an invisible wall between the two of them that no matter how hard he pushed against, he could never get through.

“Something needs to change,” she said between tears, and Jim stayed silent because he knew that meant him giving up the job in Philly. He didn’t want to give up the job in Philly. And if he couldn’t even bring himself to put and arm around her as she cried, was it worth it? And what a horrible thought, but was he wrong?

“What we’re doing now isn’t working,” he agreed.

“It isn’t. I’m not happy. Yesterday, I thought about calling you back so many times, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. I dreaded the thought. And based on what happened when I did call, perhaps I was right to do so.”

Jim prepared a response to that, but didn’t have time before Pam followed up too quickly. “Did you sleep with Cathy?”

The look of shock and hurt on Pam’s face when Jim even hesitated to give an immediate response was tragic, and Jim knew it was something he would never forget. He looked away, not strong enough to watch her react to what he had to say. He didn’t want to say it. But, he knew that if their relationship was going to survive, she had to trust him and if she was going to trust him, he had to tell her the truth. “That depends on your definition of sleep with. I didn’t have sex with her. I didn’t kiss her. But, I didn’t make her leave after you hung up the phone, and she and watched _Cheers_ reruns until she fell asleep with her head on my chest.” Jim kept his vision focused on the living room floor, but he could still feel her tearful eyes pointed directly at him. “And I won’t say I didn’t enjoy it,” he finished.

Jim wished she would yell at him. Give him a good screaming. Maybe even slap him around a little bit. She didn’t do any of that. Instead, they sat in silence for ten minutes. Eventually, he went to look up at her face, and he instantly regretted. Not only a look of hurt and betrayal, but a look of almost resignation.

“I’m sorry, Pam. I’m so sorry. I love you.”

”I love you, too, Jim,” she said, and for a moment, she gave one of the most pained smiles he had ever seen. “I don’t trust you. And I don’t know how our relationship can survive if I don’t trust you. I want it to, Jim, more than anything else. I just don’t know.”

“I made you trust me once before,” said Jim. “I should be able to do it again, no?”

“I don’t know, Jim,” Pam replied. “I hope so.”

Jim wanted to tell her he loved her again, but that would just sound pathetic. Instead, he said “I think I’m going to find somewhere else to sleep tonight.”

He gathered a few things—phone, keys, wallet—and moved to the front door. Pam said nothing but nodded in agreement. As Jim stood in the doorway, ignoring how pathetic it might have been, he said “I love you, Pam” once more. He wanted so badly to run to her and kiss her. But, instead, he walked out into the night and closed the door behind him.


	6. Chapter 6

Jim recounted how he got here as he waited for someone to open the door. After he got in his car, he started driving in the general direction of Downtown, planning to find a hotel to stay in. A few moments later, though, he thought that he had done enough damage to the family for one night and he wasn’t about to go blow their cash on a hotel room. He briefly considered finding somewhere to park and sleep in his car, but he didn’t like that idea either. Then he thought that he should just go home; _things weren’t that bad, were they?_ But he couldn’t do that. He knew he couldn’t. If he thought that he could do it if he knew he would get in the house and she would start screaming at him. He could take screaming. It was the silence he couldn’t stand. The sitting in silence and wanting so badly to reach over and grab her and kiss her hard and show her how much he loved her but he wasn’t able to do that and why couldn’t he? He couldn’t stand that. So, he kept driving around until he found one place where he thought he could stay for the night. It was kind of a hotel.

“Jim?” Dwight said, clearly confused. “What’s going on?”

“Hi, Dwight. I was—“ Jim chuckled nervously. “I was wondering if I could stay the night.”

Dwight was still clearly confused. “You mean at Schrute farms?”

“No, no, no, I don’t... not that... it’s just that... not because... Pam.”

Dwight understood what was going on, or at least he seemed to. His face softened and he smiled comfortingly. “Come on in, Jim,” he said.

As he sat down in Dwight’s living room, Jim couldn’t help but remember the last time he spent the night at Dwight’s. Years ago. With Pam. He and Pam had to help Dwight get over Angela. Now Dwight was comforting him as his relationship with Pam collapsed. How the tables turn.

Dwight offered him some sort of alcohol, probably made from beets, but Jim didn’t feel like drinking anyway, so he asked Dwight for a glass of water.

“So,” Dwight said, sitting across from Jim. “What’s going on?”

“Pam and I are having some troubles. With our relationship.”

Dwight nodded. “I heard.” To Jim’s surprised look, he explained “Pam talked to me today. Asked me what exactly happened with you and Cathy in Tallahassee.” Jim cringed at that. “So, did she kick you out?”

“No,” Jim said, then after waiting a moment, explained “I just couldn’t stay, you know?” Dwight gave him a reassuring smile. “She doesn’t trust me.”

“No,” Dwight said simply.

Then, Jim moved to ask a question to which he already knew the answer but just needed to hear it said out loud. “Can a relationship survive if one person doesn’t trust the other?”

Dwight didn’t answer for a moment. “Not for very long,” he said eventually.

Jim let out a long sigh and hung his head. He knew already that that was true. In fact, Dwight’s answer was less harsh than the “No” he was expecting. But he still hated to hear it.

Dwight moved over and patted Jim on the back. “You guys are going to be okay, Jim. You love each other beyond imagination. You two love each other even more than I love beets.” That made Jim chuckle very quietly, which alerted Dwight to the fact that he was crying.

“I do love her, Dwight. You don’t even understand.” He raised his head, showing the tears streaming down his face. “Just now, when we were talking, I wanted to kiss her so badly. Reach over and grab her face and kiss her hard. I couldn’t do it, Dwight. I physically could not do it. I wanted to so badly, but I couldn’t.” Jim looked around the house, going back in time to that first night.

“Dwight, you remember when you and Angela had just ended things? And I started talking to you about when I was in love with Pam but couldn’t have her? Remember what I said about that?”

Dwight took a moment to answer. “You said you wouldn’t wish it on your worst enemy.”

Jim smiled very slightly at Dwight’s accurate memory. “I’m back, Dwight. I’m back to the time when I would watch her with Roy and wanted to kiss her so badly but I couldn’t. I’m back, Dwight. That part of my life was supposed to be over, in the past. It’s back.” The speed and volume of Jim’s voice picked up. “I want to kiss her so badly. You don’t understand, I want to kiss her so badly but I can’t.”

”Well, why can’t you, Jim?” Dwight exclaimed. “She is your wife. You both still have rings on your fingers. She _isn’t_ engaged to someone else, she’s _married_ to _you_. What’s stopping you from driving home and grabbing her and kissing her like you say?”

“I don’t know,” Jim admitted. “It’s would just be hard.”

“ _Hard_?” Dwight scoffed. “You’re going to have to do a lot of hard things in the coming days and months.” Now his voice settled back down. “Jim, I care about you and Pam. I want you two to work things out. You love her. She loves you. This is going to be _hard_. But I think you’ll find it’s totally worth it.”

“So you want me to just drive home and just kiss her? Isn’t that risky?”

”It is a risk, Jim, but at this point you two are rapidly running out of things left to lose. And no, Jim, it’s not just that I want you to do that. It’s that _you_ want to do that, you’re just too scared.”

Jim knew that Dwight was right. He knew that Dwight’s advice was good. But he _was_ scared. Still, he managed to stand up and turn towards the door. He saw Dwight smile at that.

As Jim walked to the door, he had decided he was really gonna do it. He was going to kiss his wife. He just hoped that he wouldn’t be ending back up at Schrute Farms an hour later.

“Thank you, Dwight,” he said. “Really, I mean it.” Dwight just smiled and nodded towards the door.

Pam didn’t really do anything after Jim left. She didn’t move from her spit on the couch, turning on the local news only to provide background noise. Background noise for her scary, scary thoughts.

What did the future hold for Jim and her? Once upon a time, she thought that question was settled. They had fallen into their peaceful, boring routine. And she had loved it. Then Jim took the job in Philly. Was it wrong of her to wish he hadn’t? Because now the question of what the future held terrified her.

She didn’t trust him. It wasn’t that she couldn’t trust him ever again. Maybe she would. She hoped and prayed she would. If she could never trust him again, there was no point in not getting a divorce right that day.

God, _that word_. She hated that word. Hated it because she was never supposed to have to use it. Because things were going so well with her and Jim, how could it have fallen apart? But now, no matter how Pam felt about it, there’s was a real chance they would be getting a divorce. What an ugly word.

But she hoped she would be able to trust him again. She loved him too much not to. What they might need is professional help. Really, though, she knew that that would only push them in the right direction. The real work would be up to the two of them.

Drifting off into her thoughts, Pam shot back to reality when she heard the front door being opened. It was Jim, right? It had to be Jim. _Why would he have cone back?_ If it wasn’t Jim, then this terrible night was about to become horrible for a whole new reason. Pam slowly moved towards the door, trying to keep herself behind one wall as she did so. Luckily, she saw Jim open the door and went into the entryway to meet him.

Neither of them spoke while Jim closed the door. Then, in a quick motion, he walked up to her, grabbed both sides of her face, and kissed her hard. Pam felt his lips aggressively pressing against hers. It came as a shock to Pam but not necessarily unwelcome. By the end, she was enjoying the kiss, if still confused about its cause. After a minute, Jim pulled away from the kiss, and instead wrapped his arms tightly around her back, holding her close. They stayed like that for a few minutes more, and when Jim pulled away, Pam saw the beginnings of tears in his eyes, reflecting those in his own.

“Pam,” he said, “I love you so much. Don’t ever let me go a day without telling you how much I love you.” That made her feel warm, and she smiled.

“I love you, too, Jim. More than you would ever believe. I know because I don’t believe it myself.”

There was an awkward moment where neither of them said anything. Pam, for her part, didn’t even know what to say. Luckily, Jim spoke first.

“I think I’m going to give up my job in Philly,” he said. This was news to her. Good news, she thought, but there was something that worried her.

”Jim, I can’t make you do this,” she warned. “Our relationship won’t go well if you think I’m keeping you from what you really want.”

To Pam’s surprise, Jim chuckled at that as he shook his head. “What I really want?” he said. “Pam, _you_ are what I really want. _You_ are _all_ I really want. You and the kids. You guys are way more important to me than any job. And I know I haven’t been doing a very good job of showing that. But it’s true. It’s one of the truest things I’ve ever said.

”We’re having some problems, Pam. You know that. You don’t trust me. I’ve done some bad things. And we won’t fix that tonight, and we might not fix that in the next days or months. But I am dedicated to doing what needs to be done to fix that. Because that is what is more important to me than anything else. The thought of losing you, Pam, it terrifies. I promised to love you no matter what the circumstances were, and I intend to follow through with that. The alternative is unthinkable. Because I do love you, and I always will.”

After that, Pam didn’t know what to say. She was grinning widely, but what was she supposed to say to that? She decided to keep it simple.

“I love you, too, Jim,” she said as she put her arms around his neck. And as she leaned in to kiss him, she thought that she was so glad that he came back home.


	7. Chapter 7

When Pam woke up the morning after Jim’s return, they were still on opposite sides of the bed, not touching each other. On the other hand, Pam was lying on her back, facing the ceiling. She rotated her head (less than she would have days ago) to see Jim, despite being all the way at his edge of the bed, was lying on side facing her. Small steps.

Pam looked at the time. _7:30_. Their alarm wouldn’t go off for another 15 minutes. She rolled over and kissed Jim on the cheek before watching his eyes flutter open. “Good morning,” she said.

Still squinting his eyes, Jim looked around the room as if confused as to where exactly he was. “Hey, beautiful,” he said, clearly still waking up. “What be time?”

Pam chuckled at her husband’s sleepiness before leaning in to give him a very light kiss on the lips. That seemed to wake him up, as he placed one arm around her and pulled her against him to kiss her hard. “I love you, Pam,” he said, less groggy now.

Pam smiled at that. “I love you, too, Jim,” she said. She rolled him onto his back and climbed on top of him to start kissing him harder, which he seemed to greatly enjoy.

Soon, however, they heard the alarm go off and knew they had to get ready for work and deal with the kids. Each climbed off their side of the bed and went through the morning.

Later that day, Pam and Jim had decided to start having lunch together in the break room again. “I missed this,” she said, to which Jim smiled sadly. “Did you call Colin yet?” Pam asked.

She knew instantly from his moment’s hesitation that the answer was no. At this point she was really waiting to see how he would respond. “I... have... not,” he said eventually.

Pam nodded, saying nothing. At least he didn’t lie to her. “I know I should,” Jim admitted. “It’s going to be a hard call. I really liked that job.”

The look of sadness on Jim’s face concerned Pam. “Jim, I don’t think I can let you do this,” Pam said. “A relationship can’t work if you feel like you had to give up what you really wanted.”

Jim frowned. “No, Pam, you misunderstood me. That job isn’t what I _really_ want. I know what I’m doing by giving it up. What I wish you could know is that what I _really_ want is you. You and the kids.”

A thought popped into Pam’s head that sounded childish and pathetic, but she couldn’t stop herself from saying it. “You haven’t been acting like it.”

To Pam’s surprise, Jim didn’t look offended at all. “I know, Pam,” he said. “I’m sorry. I hope one day I can make you know that that really is the truth.”

Later that day Pam heard Jim call Colin to quit. “It’s done,” he said to her as he hung up the phone. He went back to work before she would reply. 

The idea of couples therapy was one that would be brought up repeatedly over the next week. Either of them would say something and the other would acknowledge it, but nothing would come of it until a week later. Jim, on the couch after the kids were in bed, turned to Pam and said “I know we’ve been talking about it for a while, but I think we ought to move forward with couples therapy.”

Pam was surprised by how assertive Jim had been. “Yeah,” she agreed. “We are getting along better, but it couldn’t hurt.”

“No it couldn’t,” Jim concurred. “We were doing pretty badly there for a moment. And I want to avoid ever going down that road again, in either the near or far future.” So they set a date.

As the date approached, though, Jim became much more hesitant. At first he tried using some obvious lie about having too much work, but he got off that train quickly, perhaps once he realized it’s irony.

When they parked their car in the parking lot, Jim all but refused to get out. Pam had to put her arm around his back and guide him inside the building, knowing that if she let go, he might walk back to the car.

When they got inside and sat down with the therapist, she confronted head on the issue of why Jim didn’t want to be there.

Both women stared at him in silence for a long stretch until he finally spoke. Very quietly, “I failed.” Tears almost instantly started flowing down his face but it was his depressed expression that had Pam concerned.

”I made so many promises when we got married,” Jim continued. “Our wedding vows. And I broke them. I didn’t put you first. I put the job first. We ended up here.” Now, the magnitude of his tears increased and he started approaching sobbing. The therapist handed him a tissue. “There was a moment, last week, when I got home from Philly and I knew that you wanted me to quit the job. There was a moment where I wondered if it would even be worth it.”

Now Jim was sobbing full on. “I failed,” he whispered so quietly. Pam leaned over and put her arms around him and held her husband and told him it was okay as he put his head in her chest and cried.

It was three months after Jim quit the job when he got the call. He wasn’t expecting it. He didn’t even know how she got the number. He was sitting on the couch with Pam when he picked it up. “Hey, Jim,” the voice on the other end said.

Jim could have hung up right then and there. Instead, he said “Hello, Cathy.” That got Pam’s attention. “One moment,” he told Cathy before turning to Pam. “Do you want me to put it on speakerphone?” Jim asked his wife.

”No, I trust you,” she said. “But on second thought, this sounds like it might be fun.” So Jim turned the speaker phone on. “Hey, Cathy. You’re on speaker,” Pam said.

“Hey, Pam,” Cathy said, clearly disappointed. “Glad to see Jim and you started working out your problems.” Pam eyed Jim and he frowned, planning on apologizing.

“Yes, uh, say, Cathy? Why exactly are you calling?” Jim asked.

“Oh, Jim, you know, I just wanted to check in, say hi, all that. So, did you get over your problems with the City of Scranton?”

“Well,” Jim explained, “I have some bones to pick with the city itself, but really it’s home to my three favorite people in the whole world. And that’s a pretty damn big redeeming factor. I love Pam. I love Pam so much it makes me think I’m crazy. Every single day is better because I’m sharing it with her. Do you understand that?”

“Yeah, alright, Jim,” Cathy said. “I’ve gotta go now. Goodbye!” She hung up the phone call.

Jim shook his head. She was legitimately insane. Pam, he saw, on the other hand, was smiling at him.

“I love you, too, Jim,” Pam said, and she put her arms around his back to pull him in, kiss him, and hold him tight.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, here we are. I’ve actually finished this. Thank you to everyone who has read this. I hope you enjoyed it.
> 
> Next up, I have another Jim/Pam story that’s alright in the planning stages. It might not be for everyone, but I think it’s going to be a fun one. Until then, thanks again for reading!


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